Lady Gaga's 'Vogue' Video Exposes Heavily Altered Cover (Video)

In an anti-Photoshop era, a behind-the-scenes featurette makes a large amount of digital tinkering apparent.

Vogue

August 30, 2012

by

Elizabeth Snead

We all know that magazine covers are always, always, always Photoshopped – sometimes creating some pretty amusing results such as missing fingers, hands, legs, hacked off hips. Who can forgetKristen Stewart's missing left arm on the cover of Glamour?

But a just-released video from the Lady Gaga Vogue cover shoot reveals just how much Photoshop whittling work went into creating the singer's extreme wasp-waist and clearly elongated height on the mag's cover.

The montage video of behind-the-scenes footage during the shoot by photographers Mert Alas and Marcus Piggot, shows a decidedly less stretched out Gaga than the one who appears on the Sept. issue, which is, ironically, the heaviest issue in Vogue’s entire history.

But not everyone approves of the message that these Photoshopped images are sending. Overly airbrushed ads of Julia Roberts and Christy Turlington were two of many cosmetics ads banned by the British government last year for being "unrealistic."

Recently, a group of U.S. teenage girls -- headed by a blogger named Julia Bluhm, 14 -- won a battle with Seventeen magazine. Their Change.org petiton , asking editors to stop altering models' bodies to look more slender, was signed by 86,439 people.

The mag's editors agreed and started a "Body Peace Treaty," having staff members make a positive body image a priority in the fashion mag aimed at young girls.

And guess what? Teen Vogue is next in these young girls' firing line. Carina Cruz and Emma Stydahar created a Change.org petition called Teen Vogue: Give Us Images of Real Girls. They are asking the magazine, also with a teenage readership, to follow Seventeen's suit. So far, they have 44,568 signatures.